Football's Worst Nightmare
Roger Goodell and I have the same nightmare. In it, an NFL player is killed during a game.
Unlike the Commish, who was revealed to have this fear (the NFL and Goodell both disputed the assertion) in a recent profile in ESPN The Magazine, there is nothing figurative about my bad dream. It attacks my sleep periodically, usually in the summer rather than during football season, as if my subconscious is reminding me just how much the NFL means to me.
The doomed player in my nightmare isn't one of my beloved Cincinnati Bengals. He wears a generic dark jersey that could be any team's uniform. He is catching a pass, so he's probably a wide receiver, though because I can never make out his number I suppose he could be a tight end or a running back. He jumps for a high throw, and as he comes down he is blasted on either side. One defender hits him high, one defender hits him low.
And then he's literally ripped in half by the force of the hits. Right after this point, I always wake with a start, bile rising in my esophagus.
I relate this gruesome glimpse into my subconscious because I know precisely when the dreams began. It was eight years ago, when a professional player — a former NFL defensive lineman — suffered a fatal spine injury on the field.
His name was Al Lucas and he played defensive tackle for the Arena Football League's Los Angeles Avengers. He died on the hard carpet of the Staples Center eight years ago this week, on April 10, 2005. He was 26 years old. No, he wasn't torn asunder by opponents. Instead, a relatively unremarkable collision took his life. Nothing about it was unique to arena football and its roller derby–esque format. It was the kind of routine collision that happens thousands upon thousands of times at every level of the game across the country, from spring practice to summer hell week to autumn glory.
And that scared me most of all.
Footage of Lucas's death does not exist on the Internet. NBC Sports, which held the AFL
Unlike the Commish, who was revealed to have this fear (the NFL and Goodell both disputed the assertion) in a recent profile in ESPN The Magazine, there is nothing figurative about my bad dream. It attacks my sleep periodically, usually in the summer rather than during football season, as if my subconscious is reminding me just how much the NFL means to me.
The doomed player in my nightmare isn't one of my beloved Cincinnati Bengals. He wears a generic dark jersey that could be any team's uniform. He is catching a pass, so he's probably a wide receiver, though because I can never make out his number I suppose he could be a tight end or a running back. He jumps for a high throw, and as he comes down he is blasted on either side. One defender hits him high, one defender hits him low.
And then he's literally ripped in half by the force of the hits. Right after this point, I always wake with a start, bile rising in my esophagus.
I relate this gruesome glimpse into my subconscious because I know precisely when the dreams began. It was eight years ago, when a professional player — a former NFL defensive lineman — suffered a fatal spine injury on the field.
His name was Al Lucas and he played defensive tackle for the Arena Football League's Los Angeles Avengers. He died on the hard carpet of the Staples Center eight years ago this week, on April 10, 2005. He was 26 years old. No, he wasn't torn asunder by opponents. Instead, a relatively unremarkable collision took his life. Nothing about it was unique to arena football and its roller derby–esque format. It was the kind of routine collision that happens thousands upon thousands of times at every level of the game across the country, from spring practice to summer hell week to autumn glory.
And that scared me most of all.
Footage of Lucas's death does not exist on the Internet. NBC Sports, which held the AFL